London Bridge

Subject: London Bridge

Why do we assume that the police and security services can prevent the issue which occurred on London Bridge yesterday. Terrorism is a phenomena which came to light during and after 9/11 when Al Qaeda became active in its attempt to destabilise society in the West. 
Parts of the East and Middle East have been destabilised for decades with religious conflict but the focus has now shifted to include those areas laying outside the religious spectra, encompassing the historical actions of the west in their quest to find and exploit the East 200 years ago. Our actions then have come back to bite us but it's hard to see how largely political incursions, mostly benign, often with infrastructural improvements which were taken onboard and are sill used and practiced by the countries from which terrorists were either born or is the home of a father or grandfather. Has the hate and the enmity been a part of an individual's story a story founded on the stories told down the line and made worse because of the hatred preached towards the infidel, the outlier, the heathen who lives outside the faith.
If so there is no healing the rift with people who take what is said literally. The Quran is full of interpretive language as is the Bible, it was part of the storytelling and the use of the parable to illustrate a deeper meaning but which, because of the danger of interpretation can lead the listener into a dark place.
Every day on the domestic scene people are murdered, sometimes accidentally some times with malice but it rarely gets reported. The conflict in the home and on the street which spills over through the heightened stimulus of alcohol or drugs is common in some parts of our urban sprawl where life has become difficult and meaningless. It's not the agonising Township trauma of South Africa where life is problematic but it is a life seen in comparison to the media presentation of consumerism, a life which has little to offer when you are poor.
The man on London Bridge had a knife (how many of our urban youth carry knifes) but it seems as if his tipping point was perhaps living amongst 'the other, the infidel' his crusade was to make his presence felt in the only way he saw open to him, through violence. His friends of similar persuasion are a potential threat and just as the school bully sometimes becomes a wife beater or a thug at the football match, so the twisted philosophy of finding fault with others for their religious persuasion rather than with oneself become messianic and the consequences of ones actions become irrelevant.
The brave souls who wrestled him to the ground and disarmed him were responding in the old fashioned way which we are now told we mustn't do for fear of being indicted, having taken the law into our own hands. The law enforcement meanwhile arrived to drag the last man off the presumed terrorist and then, on seeing what looked like a suicide vest, shot him.
The reaction of the police and the authorities went into overdrive and that part of London shut down for hours. Having lived through the times in Johannesburg when bombs were part of the ANCs arsenal to terrorise and destabilise the cities we were soon allowed to get on with our lives by playing down the facts with very few cordons erected and as little fuss as possible. 
Whether it is more correct to accept that life and limb will always be at risk, even in the comfort of our own homes, and not try to  create some illusory paradise then the more we will all be accommodated to the changing times.